Rebellion

Alone, lost from the humdrum of the world, he sat in a dark corner of the room, watching his tears fall drop by drop on the ground and merge with the soil. A golden line of sunlight filtering through a slit in the window was the only light that permeated the room. The specks of dust dancing in the light, as if having a life of their own somehow enraged him. The utensils on the outline of the rack stood silent silhouettes in the background and the mud splattered ageing wooden chair and the mattress on which he now sat were his only companions in the dark. His eyes made out a troop of ants marching into a crack in the ground. There were so many ants all around. What happened to them when they died? He never saw these dead bodies lying around or mass graves of ants.

Somehow he felt uncomfortable; lost and empty.  Uncomfortable maybe because he couldn’t understand why he felt sad. Was he sad? He tried to question himself but was too confused.

Everyone died one day. So what was new about it? So many people had died last year. People he knew, he had seen, met and talked with. There was Barua Aunty’s daughter Pinky ba ;dying of jaundice ,Rubul da dying in the accident , Runu aita of blood pressure and Ratul da of the garage dying of typhoid. All of them were people he had met but somehow he hadn’t felt this way. This way… what way? Something was simply amiss, gnawing at him and eating him from inside.

To all who knew him he was a quiet boy, not given to too much of emotional or sentimental displays but here he was now feeling as though something had been taken away from him, snatched away in a flash.

She was just a kid. The events of the evening came back to him.

 It was around 5.30 in the evening. It was fast becoming dark and there was already a chill in the air. He was as usual, hanging around with his friends in the tea stall; idling away his time talking amongst themselves and occasionally staring at the passing girls.

 Suddenly there was a scream, the screech of tyres and a piteous thud followed by sudden commotion. The scream somehow stirred him and he ran to the spot from where it had come. Rushing to the edge of the road he first saw the sprawled form. He was the first to reach it. Bending down in the light of the street lamp he saw it was a young girl. Her eyes were closed and blood was trickling down the sides of her lips. He lifted her up in his arms and as he did so her eyelids fluttered open briefly. Their eyes met. She was bleeding profusely now.

He lifted her up in his arms and ran… Nothing else came to his mind. Crossing the road he ran to the hospital. A chorus of voices came behind him. The rest became blurred. He remembered screaming for the doctor. The nurses, ward boys crowing around him and then the world was black for him.

When he came back to his senses the world around him was still blurred but there were some changes. She was gone and he was she wouldn’t be back.  There was a condolence meeting. The local MLA was most indignant, had staged a road block for two hours and had even demanded that a committee be set up to recommend urgent measures for road safety.  The local students’ body had called a condolence meet and a minister from the opposition would be there to offer his condolences.

He was the local idiot. Watching the herd of humanity was his daily occupation. He knew about all the happenings in the market.

He knew her and yet he didn’t know her. He knew that she came to the nearby bhai bhoni store to buy blue chelpark ink occasionally, to buy vegetables from Hemen, the vegetable vendor twice a week.  He also knew that she carried her coins in a small blue purse to give change. She studied in the Cotton College and was in her first year of BA.   She was the daughter of Dipak Barua, a professor in the physics department of the University.  Her mother had died in a car accident two years ago and she had a little brother at home. 

The blare of the horn and the dust in its wake shattered his reverie.  He clambered out of the room and surveyed his surroundings from his seat behind the oak tree in the market. He could hear the doors opening and slamming shut. Perhaps it was the flies buzzing around his face, the incessant blare of the microphones as it carried the voices of the Ministers, youth leaders and others expressing their condolence that brought forth a tide of anger in him.  Suddenly he knew what to do. 

The two bored looking guards were too distracted by the welcoming committee to notice a small boy with a crooked smile creeping up on the car.   The crack of the windshield reached the ears of the security guards a fraction too late.  The small jagged stone in his hand found its mark on the sticker with “official” written on it.  There was a brief pause of resistance before the glass cracked with a perfect circle at the spot where there was once a sticker.   He unzipped his pants and started spraying the sunset yellow all over the number plate and the bonnet of the car. As the agitated security guards and driver of the car dragged him away he started laughing and threw a stone at the windshield smashing it into smithereens.

The slap sent him flying off his feet and he landed on the ground followed by the sickening thud of two kicks on his behind. Inwardly he grimaced in pain but he knew that he had to continue with his act.  The crazy half crooked smile never left his lips.  More retribution would have been in store for him had it not been for some nearby shopkeepers who pleaded his cause. “Let him go. He is mad.” All the while he kept grinning; the stupid idiotic half crooked smile of his. 

Slapped and kicked he lay curled up in the dust underneath the tree and saw many feet and heard the slap of their shoes and slippers against the concrete. His eyes stared upwards and fell on a couple of vultures in the air. The vultures seem to be looking at the proceedings as they slowly circled in the air. His eyes flitted back and forth between the vultures and the people on the ground and soon it was difficult to tell who was what.

aita - grandmother in Assamese language